It wasn’t so much taking a bite out of the fried rat that I once ate in a market in Laos that bothered me, and it wasn’t the fact that the rat still had it’s tail and tiny feet attached either. But upon realizing that I just spent a few minutes nibbling on a rat that had dozens of maggots crawling around in its flesh, I naturally had to work real hard to stop myself from vomiting. And to this day, every time I think of that rat or see the one photo I have of it, the rest of my day is ruined.

My worst? By far, wild boar sausages in France. I’ll try anything, and I enjoy gamey meat for the novelty of the flavour. But these? Tasted like rotten meat steeped in battery acid, and I took a really big BITE of the first one. I don’t know if I just caught a few really bad ones, because I haven’t had boar since, for the simple reason that the merest hint of *that* smell closes my throat, instantly.

And some other votes:

- Iguana (both Giuliana and Megan ate this in Nicaragua and both gave it a solid “do not do this again”);

- Beef pupusas in San Salvador, though tasty, made Line pretty ill on a long bus ride to Guatemala City;

- Lamb brain was a big miss from reader Bernard, who tried it in Turkey;

- from Hipmunk’s own Jacqueline: “mine was horse, sushi-style, in Roppongi, japan. Yuck. i am now a vegetarian…”

and finally Chris warned against balut in the Philippines. Having spent 4 months there and eating my fair share, I can agree that it’s an acquired taste – balut is a fertilized duck embryo that is boiled alive and eaten in the shell. Not for the faint of heart.